Ex-communist Europe

Poland and Russia

Wounds of the past

A POLISH art student provoked a hiccup in the often difficult relations between his nation and Russia last week. Jerzy Bohdan Szumczyk, 26, a student at Gdansk's Fine Arts Academy, placed a sculpture called "Komm, Frau" (Come, Woman), depicting a Red Army soldier raping a pregnant German woman while holding her hair and putting a gun to her head, on a street in the city then known as Danzig—next to a communist-era memorial to Soviet Union troops that defeated Nazi forces in 1945.

The 300 kilo sculpture was installed overnight. It only remained in place for a few hours as police removed it following a complaint. The event made national news and provoked an angry response from Russia’s ambassador to Poland.

“I am deeply outraged by a prank of a Gdansk Fine Arts Academy student whose pseudo-art desecrated the memory of 600,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the fight for Poland’s freedom and independence,” wrote Alexander Alekseev, the Russian envoy. Russian MP Franc Klincewicz said he would demand an apology from the artist.

In 1939 the free city of Danzig was home to Germans and a Polish minority. It became the Polish city of Gdansk when its German population was expelled or fled at the end of the war. Mr Szumczyk made the sculpture after reading about rapes committed against women in the city by advancing Red Army troops.

Dorota Karas, writing in Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish daily, said Gdansk city records estimate that up to 40% of the women living in Danzig were raped. “At a certain moment I felt that I had to get this topic that took place in Gdansk out of my system,” Mr Szumczyk told the Gazeta. “This topic scares me. I deliberately showed a soldier and a woman in the aesthetics of socialist realism. I wanted it to be in this style. I know that the work is vulgar but such is our history,” he said.

Prosecutors in the city began an investigation but dropped the case after they decided the student had not incited hatred on ethnic grounds nor desecrated a public space dedicated to historical memory. They added police are yet to determine whether Mr Szumczyk committed a misdemeanor for an alleged ‘tasteless incident’.

Antoni Pawlak, spokesman for Gdansk’s mayor said the rape of women by soldiers was one of many subjects that have been swept under the carpet in Polish history. “However I am surprised by the ambassador’s reaction. Similar artistic expressions take place all over the world; it shouldn’t be an event of international importance. It would be different if City Hall decided to erect such a monument,” he said.

Marcin Wojciechowski, a spokesman of Poland’s foreign office., tweeted: “I’m sorry about the incident of the statue of the Soviet soldiers in Gdansk. It’s a pseudo-artistic action. It will not influence relations between Poland and Russia”. It wasn’t only Soviet troops that brutally raped women as the Red Army and the western Allies fought their way into Germany in 1944-45; American, British, Canadian and French soldiers did so too.

Even so, according to Anthony Beevor, a British historian, the brutality against women from the Soviets was on a different scale. Writing in the Guardian in 2002, Mr Beevor said at least 2m German women are thought to have been raped, with 1.4m victims in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone. In Berlin, one doctor deduced that out of approximately 100,000 women raped in the city, some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide.

Many Russian historians dispute these claims saying the figures are based on faulty methodology and unreliable sources.

Poland has to take care of itself and the first step in the right direction was the creation of the Visegrod Group. Czech President has already extended an invitation to Ukraine to join he group. Over a century-old Marshal Pilsudski's political vision of Europe is still valid for central and eastern Europe.
As far as the Wetst, Germany and Russia are concerned, Poles should follow the old English adage: "Forgive, but remember the names of the bastards".

Let' not forget about 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, made up of Ukrainian volunteers. There were several more volunteers than places. Those "rejects" committed later war crimes like massacre in Huta Pieniacka, cooperating in genocide of Poles in the south-eastern Poland conducted by Ukrainian nationalists from fascist OUN/UPA. Later on some of them eventually joined the 14ht Division.

"Soviet work camps"?! It's not even an understatement, it's a cruel joke. Life expectancy in some of them was less then 3 months. Your Iberian pen-name tells me that you probably don't know what does it mean to stay alive in -56 degrees C, with winds up to 120 km/hour, with no relevant shelter, scarcely any food and 12 hours shifts in uranium mines or outdoors. So even their real designation - hard labor or slave labor camps, not work camps - doesn't come close to the reality in those places. Next thing, you'll speak of benign Russian boyscout camps for class enemies...

Yeah, for instance they cover up crimes against humanity, the mass rape of women by means of relativism.

For instance they refer to quite irrelevant cases where in recent years a vile attempt was made to defame innocence locals, accusing them of crimes that were obviously committed by one of the German SS Einsatzgruppen. Hence they started digging up bullets, but that's when the "investigation" was suddenly stopped.

Considering how much time it took to the nazi Germany to take France and
force the british sissies to run for their dear life at Dunkirk, the defeat
of Poland was like a swatting a fly.

Besides, it was the british cowards who enabled Hitler military machine by
serving Czechs to Hitler on a silver plate in Munich 1938 "to pacify" him.

Hitler was so fond of the Czech heavy industry and resources, he did issue a
communique to his generals to do their best not to damage the Czech
industrial capability because they were vital for the third reich war
efforts.

The Hitlers Poland allies (Poland and nazi Germany signed pact of non
aggression in 1934) side by side with the nazi Germany, Italy and Hungary
invade and dismember the Czechoslovakia.

Oct 02 1938 Poland annexed the town of Ceský Tešín with the surrounding
area (some 906 km2 (350 sq mi), some 250,000 inhabitants, Poles made about
36% of population[32]) and two minor border areas in northern Slovakia, more
precisely in the regions Spiš and Orava. (226 km2 (87 sq mi), 4,280
inhabitants, only 0.3% Poles).

Secondly, of that vast number, how many were victims of the Soviet system? the Shtrafbatalions, the Gulag?
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Strafbatalions were units in which fought people found guilty of military crimes (attempted disertions, refusal to obeying an order, etc.). Nothing political, It was an alternative to mere execution lines or detention (GULAG) times. They got the riskiest missions and defended the most difficult positions. After a while, whose lenght depended on the seriousness of their crimes, they were readmitted in their original units, whith all the previous ranks (if they were still alive, of course, and it happened not so often).
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The word "liberating" would be OK if the Red Army merely swept away the Nazis and took Berlin. But no. It helped replaced one evil empire with another.
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"Merely" sweep away the Nazis, take Berlin, loosing millions o men, resources etc. and go home for a thanks? Please, get real: nobody does anything for nothing...
Russians witdrawed from Austria and from Finland, because anyhow those two country were "neutralized", that is, no western bases there (Austria by interallied agreements, after a short period of joint occupation, Finland after bilateral negotiations), but this system did not worked everywhere. Further, after US got the Bomb (1945), a buffer zone between Russia and possible US bomber bases became a strict necessity for russian security. And without a serious neutrality pact, a political control was the one way to be sure...They took that control the hard way...

I happened to live in west Germany for a couple of years in the 1980s and totally agree with your opinion. I have hundreds German friends in Germany, Canada and the US and don't see any tendencies for domination either. They share some common national traits that can be unnerving to other nations, but if gently rebuked they start "behaving". In general it's a very industrious, generous and open nation, ready to help less fortunate than them.
I was really impressed after my conversation with a Lutheran pastor in Bremerhaven who told me during a social event we both attended that his parish youths raise money year round to make trips every summer vacation and sightsee all Nazi concentration and death camps in Europe as a warning and deterrent fro repeating anything like that in the future. Nazism was a terminal cancer on the body of that otherwise great nation. I also noticed a stark contrast between West and East Germany at that time, East Germany being a clandestine continuation of the Nazi state.